He comes to us, walking on the water

The title is a line in a song I wrote for my daughter. I doubt I could have helped but put this line in a song for my young child, because it is one of the images I associate with my own childhood.

Jesus walking on water was my "first impression" of Christianity, as a child. One of my first two books was one of those illustrated kids bible story books with pictures and told the story of Peter and the disciples going out in the boat, and becoming very afraid as a dark storm approached, and waves swelled up. Then they see Jesus walking out to them. At first they are frightened, but then joyful. Peter rushes out of the boat in this joy, but as he starts to doubt he is even able to walk on water, Jesus reaches out and grabs him. It seemed so reassuring - a God who stretches out his hand to save. He would save me many years later, while I was literally walking on water (well... waterskiiing. :-) But that tale is for another time.

Many years, and the strange worries of adolescence and early adulthood robbed me of this child-like faith. I didn't believe at all by the time I was twenty eight or so. What was worse was that I couldn't - I wanted to, but I could not find it inside me to step out onto the living water of faith. I was too worried about the implications of dinosaurs and neanderthals, mistakenly thinking literal creationism was a creedal requirement of Christian belief. My worry was that I would have to give up my reasoning mind in order to fill an empty heart up with faith, hope, and love.

But God never gave up. Like one of the best lines in the whole "Touched by an Angel" show (which for syrupy, sentimental me was not the pablum it was for many people), it doesn't matter if you don't believe in God. He believes in you.

God winks at you, day in and day out. Take this post - at the time I first thought it up, I was listening to this song, and I was looking up an article on Google in an idle way. My own voice piped in "He comes to us, walking on the water", while my eyes fell onto the screen and the abstract, which had an abstract about "sky gods... walking on water." What are the odds? Yet it happens all the time. I remember listening to a song called "Heaven" by Live for the first time, while driving home from the Sandbanks. When the chorus came on and the singer sang, "I don't need no proof, when it comes to God and truth, I can see the sunset and I believe." As we turned the corner we were on, we drove into the most spectacular sunset I had seen in a long while.

These little winks are not proof, nor are they a miraculous revelation or prophesy, and they are not meant to be. They are God talking to us, conversing with us, in our everyday lives, because we are dear to him and he loves us. And I cannot prove this assertion, I just know it. I cannot prove my own family loves me, for that matter.

But love is shown by deeds and kindnesses - it bursts forth from an internal disposition and becomes external acts of great charity and selflessness. This is what my family shows me, and it is what I try to show them. And all my life, I have been given great kindesses by God. True, life has difficult moments; but it is especially in these that those kindnesses have been most obvious.

He comes to me, walking on the water, and this is fitting somehow, for he has given me a love of water, and much of the joy in my life has been near the water. God loves me. I love Him. I let him down sometimes I know. But he loves me, and he never lets me down. Love is a very simple equation, even with an all powerful deity.

And He loves you too. Just in case you did not already know. :-)